


You Must Endure and Not Be Broken-Hearted

by VolarFinch



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Dream Smp, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Insane Wilbur Soot, Mention of Eret, Minecraft, Pre-November 16th, Realistic Minecraft, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Sort Of, Sort of only vaguely mentioned, Suicidal Thoughts, to a degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28460205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolarFinch/pseuds/VolarFinch
Summary: “It’s not my L’Manberg anymore, Niki,” he repeats, stressing the words to her, as if saying them again will make her understand better. His hands grip hers tightly, trembling with emotion. His breathing is caught in his throat again, uneven and clipped.Niki squeezes his hand.“No,” she agrees, softly, “it isn’t.”| Or, Niki and Wilbur, Troy and the Greeks, Odysseus and Penelope. Conquering, Destroying, Moving On, Home.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Technoblade, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	You Must Endure and Not Be Broken-Hearted

**Author's Note:**

> I have Thoughts on Niki Nihachu and how she watched L'Manberg change and crumble from the inside while Wilbur watched its destruction from the outside. If anyone were to understand Wilbur, I think it would have been Niki.
> 
> ALSO: It's fandom etiquette to keep fandom stuff WITHIN the fandom. The creators don't owe us anything and are their own independent people. If they want the fic taken down, then the fic will be taken down.
> 
> FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT MENTION THIS TO THE CONTENT CREATORS AND THIS IS NOT SHIP. I CANNOT STRESS BOTH OF THESE POINTS ENOUGH. This is me writing about the CHARACTERS and NOT the Real People.

“Troy has perished, the great city.

Only the red flame now lives there.

The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke and all is hidden.

We now are gone, one here, one there.

And Troy is gone forever.

Farewell, dear city.

Farewell, my country, where my children lived.

There below, the Greek ships wait.”

―  **Homer,** **The Iliad**

* * *

The room is smaller than she thought it would be.

To be fair, Niki isn’t sure what she was expecting. Tommy and Quackity had given her the gist of the room, aesthetically, and their stumbled, clipped words hold true—shaky, mad scrawls line the wall, torches have been burnt to dim embers, and a single wooden button is embedded into the wall. There’s so much more that they didn’t mention, however. They didn’t mention how small the room was or how cold air leaked through the cracks in the wall. They didn’t mention the faint smell of gunpowder lingering in the air, how it embedded into your lungs and seemed to suffocate you from the inside out. 

No wonder Wilbur was slowly being driven mad by the place—the dread and anticipation lingering in the air would drive anyone to insanity.

“Wilbur,” she says quietly, careful to not break the fragile atmosphere of the room. She’s almost afraid to talk louder, to make herself more known in a location that she was clearly never supposed to exist in.

Wilbur stiffens from his place in front of the button. She can just see his hand, which had been hovering over the detonator, freeze and retract ever-so-slightly. He turns to meet her gaze, eyes wide and panicked. He looks caught—his expression is stricken, grieving and pained. The torch flickering in his hands makes his face gaunt and unhealthy; it draws attention to the bags under his eyes. He looks so  _ tired _ —Niki swallows the urge to wrap him in a blanket and tuck him into bed. 

_ Later _ , she promises herself.  _ Not now, but later. _

“Niki?” Wilbur’s voice has the barest shake to it as he speaks, different from the now-normal lilt he speaks with in Pogtopia. He sounds like  _ her _ Wilbur, the one she's dearly missed the past several weeks. “What are—what’re you doing here? How did you even find this place?”

He sounds like a cornered animal, preparing itself to be hurt. She wants to be offended, but she can tell he’s not scared of her. He’s scared of her being here—of her seeing him like this.

“Tommy and Quackity told me,” she answers honestly, voice still low. “Or, rather, I made them tell me. You know how things echo in the ravine.”

He doesn’t say anything. Something shifts behind his eyes, something guarded and unsure; Niki braces herself for whatever conversation is ahead.

“You weren’t in your room,” she continues, by way of an explanation. “I figured I would come check up on you.”

“Why—I mean, why would you think to come  _ here _ of all places?” Wilbur asks. There’s a slight lilt in his voice, a tragic laugh bordering his words. She can tell he's attempting to try and come off as put-together, but it's a facade that's quickly falling apart. “Surely you’d have thought I was—was anywhere else.”

She doesn’t know how to explain that it had been a gut feeling. She’d been stress baking again, well-past midnight, pulling cookies out of the oven and putting more in while pacing and trying not to think too loudly. Her eye had caught Wilbur’s door at the end of the ravine, dark and empty, and she’d pulled out the last tray of cookies before grabbing her sword and leaving. She’d never been to the room before—Quackity and Tommy had only described its location, poorly and rushed, talking over each other in conflicting narratives. She’d found her way after wandering aimlessly for a bit. It was the gunpowder that had drawn her attention. It’s a smell that doesn’t fade easily.

“Wil,” she says again, softly, imparting as much emotion into his name as she possibly can. She can hear him hold his breath. His eyes stare into hers for the first time since she slipped away to Pogtopia. She’s not sure what part of her tone hits—the anguish, the understanding, or the yearning—but she’s grateful for it all the same. “Talk to me. Please.”

She can’t remember the last time Wilbur talked to her, really sat down and acknowledged her. Maybe during the election, when she was making it clear that she wasn’t running for the power, but for Fundy; or maybe it was before that, during the initial war, when their L’Manberg uniforms were still new and scratchy.

His eyes stare into hers. His irises shift color in the flickering torch light—brown to amber to red depending on the curl of the flame. It paints his expression as something between manic and grief.

After a long, tenuous moment of silence, Wilbur whispers, “Okay.”

Niki lets out a breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. She takes the few steps needed to close the gap between him and her. Carefully, gently, she slips her hand into his.

“Sit with me,” she says. She takes the torch from his hand and pulls him away from the button. Not out of the room, but away from the button––away from its siren call that even she can faintly hear. 

She tugs him to the ground, sitting him with his back to the button. She doesn’t let her gaze wander to it. She’s got to be the stronger one between the two of them right now and so she will. She replaces one of the dying torches with the one Wilbur brought, sitting herself in front of the man and taking his hands in hers. She can feel them shaking slightly, twitching against her fingers as she intertwines them.

Time draws on as they sit, hand in hand, waiting for the other to speak. Niki is patient in a way that Wilbur isn’t––she’s happy to sit here all night and then-some if that’s how long he needs to find his words. Things like this don’t unravel all at once. They take time to sort out, to find the right thread to tug free. She listens to Wilbur’s breathing, too shallow and erratic, and takes deep breaths of her own. She watches Wilbur’s chest rise and fall in time with her own. She feels his pulse calm beneath his fingers as the minutes tick by.

“Niki,” he finally says, voice clipped and pained. She thinks he’s going to stop there, to just say her name because he can, but he continues, “I’m… so sorry. Niki, I’m  _ so sorry _ .”

She blinks, then lets her surprise fade away. She brushes her thumb against his and gives him the room he needs to talk.

“We just left you there,” he goes on, “stuck under Schlatt and his stupid taxes and his  _ prison _ and––and we didn’t do anything. We were––Ender above, Niki, we were so lost. So confused. I’ve tried finding the words to tell you––countless letters and moments and impulses to stop and just  _ tell _ you––but I was too much of a coward to ever go through with it. I was afraid you would hate me. It’s not an excuse, it’s not but just––I’m so sorry for not helping you. Not after all you’ve done for us. For me.

“Things have just been getting worse, Niki.” His voice is tight. She can’t tell whether it’s because he’s on the verge of tears or because he’s forcing the words out for  _ someone _ to hear. “I––I’ve been trying to keep it together, I’ve been trying  _ so hard _ , but this fucking button and the TNT and the traitor––”

The traitor that Dream said was within their midsts. They’re words he knew would set Wilbur off, words that he knew would inspire doubt within their already fragile group. Sometimes, she thinks about driving her sword through his throat to shut him up. It’s not often, but enough that she’s aware of her borderline hatred for the man and the way his lips twitch at the mention of chaos.

“––it’s all too much, Niki,” he keeps going, drawing her from her thoughts. “Everything––everyone’s falling apart, Niki. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t pretend to know what I’m doing, not with this fucking button and the urge to just––to just blow it to smithereens. Just to destroy what I created. It’s not even what I made anymore, Niki––my L’Manberg is gone, it’s been gone for so long that I don’t even know why we’re  _ fighting _ anymore. It’s gone, it’s  _ gone, _ and I just––I want to get rid of the fucking imposter whose hollowed out its corpse and taken root like a parasite, Niki. I want the cancerous growth  _ gone _ .”

There’s vitriol in his voice, thick and acidic, hatred flickering in his brown-amber-red eyes. The torchlight makes his expression haunted––twisted and angry, grey and disconnected. He looks like a ghost of the man he once was.

_ That’s okay, _ she reasons.  _ He’s still Wilbur. Just a different Wilbur. _

“No one understands, Niki, no one  _ gets it _ . L’Manberg, Niki––my L’Manberg is  _ gone _ . It can never be, I don’t think it ever  _ was _ , I don’t––” His voice catches, fractured by anger and grief. “––I don’t think it was ever meant to be.”

She never heard the words from Eret’s mouth, but she’s heard them echo, like a ripple in a pond. Tommy, disoriented and lost, reaching for no one after another nightmare; Fundy, who she overheard repeating the words to Schlatt and stopping as soon as the words left his mouth; Wilbur, whose voice she’s heard echoing in the ravine late at night, unsure if he’s awake or asleep while she kneads dough. She wasn’t there for the betrayal, for the first of many fractures in L’Manberg and now Pogtopia, but maybe it’s for the best if she’s the only one who can keep herself steady and solid under the enormity of its legacy.

_ How long have you been holding this in your chest? _ she wants to ask, but won’t.  _ How long have you been waiting for someone to talk to about this? _

The answer is ‘too long’. She knows this.

“It’s not my L’Manberg anymore, Niki,” he repeats, stressing the words to her, as if saying them again will make her understand better. His hands grip hers tightly, trembling with emotion. His breathing is caught in his throat again, uneven and clipped.

She squeezes his hand.

“No,” she agrees, softly, “it isn’t.”

Wilbur blinks hard and  _ stares _ . She watches the shock linger in his expression, watches how his chapped lips part but nothing comes out. She watches as his eyes clear, just a bit, as someone finally  _ hears _ him. She watches as Wilbur is finally,  _ finally _ heard. His grip laxes in hers, the tension leaving his shoulders as though he were a wind-up toy being released.

She can’t ever understand, fully, what Wilbur went through in those times she wasn’t with him––before the war, the beginning of it, the betrayal, the escape to Pogtopia, those months in-between the Festival and her arrival. She can’t ever understand it, but he can’t understand what she went through either.

He can’t comprehend how she watched  _ her _ L’Manberg crumble. He can’t understand the agony in her chest when Fundy burned her flag and burned her country down with it. He can’t comprehend how she stumbled for  _ hours _ in the dark, picking up the ashes of her flag and tucking it away in a chest for her to have. He can’t comprehend the despair that clawed up her throat as a bitter wind swept by and took the remains of her flag with it. He can’t comprehend how she sat in that dark, burnt field for hours and sobbed until she nearly passed out there. He can’t comprehend the way her skin crawled every time Schlatt grinned, how he would walk into her bakery and demand more and more and  _ more _ . He can’t comprehend the hell she put up when Schlatt put her in debtors jail, how she screamed and clawed and  _ snarled _ like Fundy had taught her when she first arrived. He can’t comprehend the timelessness of the cell, how she was only freed because Schlatt wanted her to cater for the Festival, how she stumbled to her bakery and slept for nearly two days. He can’t comprehend the anguish she went through, held down during the festival as Tubbo was executed in front of  _ everyone _ . He can’t comprehend that while he watched his city crumble from the outside, eager to find that hollow horse to let him slip inside so he could raze the rest of it himself, she had watched the massacre of Troy from the inside. She watched it fall, watched it curdle, watched it  _ burn _ from the inside out.

Wilbur might not understand what she went through, just as she cannot understand what  _ he _ went through, but they both understand one thing: their home, their L’Manberg, is gone.

“Our L’Manberg is gone,” she continues softly. She hears his breathing hitch. “And that’s okay. Sometimes––sometimes we have to let go, Wil.”

“I want it gone, Niki,” he says, just as quietly. “I can’t––I can’t stand to look at it, anymore, Niki. It mocks me. The voices––”

Wilbur stops himself. There’s an alarmed look in his eyes as the words slip out. His hands twitch in hers.

“What do they say?” she asks, still gentle. 

The knowledge that there are voices don’t surprise her. Everyone in Pogtopia seems to have them, in a variety of ways––Technoblade, muttering to himself on the potato farm; Tommy, who will stare into nothing sometimes before coming back to his senses, scoffing that he’s  _ not _ annoying, even though no one said anything; Quackity, who will stand a little too straight, who’s tone closes off, who glances behind his shoulder as if he heard someone say something; Tubbo, whose face will scrunch up in the way it does when he’s tasted something sour. She’s heard them herself as well––distant things that whisper unintelligibly to her. It doesn’t surprise her that there’s something out there, following them, speaking to them, and she wonders how loud the voices are to Wilbur.

He watches her, looks at her,  _ waiting _ . He must find what he’s looking for because he lets out a shaky exhale and says, “They say to blow it up. They say it was never meant to be. They say the TNT should be the thing that gets me.”

“Do you think that?” she pushes, careful.

He laughs, dark and unsure and  _ scared _ .

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he muses, lips turned up in a bitter smile, eyes shadowed by his mess of hair.

She wonders when he last brushed his hair––wonders when he last took care of himself.

She takes one of her hands from his and uses it to push the hair from his face. His dark brown-amber-red eyes stare into hers. She manages a small smile of her own.

“That’s okay,” she says. “That gives us room to work with.”

She rises, stretching for the first time in hours. Her legs ache, pins and needles shooting up her limbs from the hours of being in one position. She holds a hand out to Wilbur, who looks at it as if he doesn’t entirely understand. He looks like a lost child, confused and unsure, wanting to trust but unsure if he should.

“Let’s go home, Wil.”

His eyes flicker from her hand to her face. His eyes––red, amber, brown, amber, red, brown, amber, red, red, amber, brown––seem to settle, some of the mania lost. His lips quirk into a small, familiar smile she hasn’t seen in a long time as he takes her hand and stands.

“I don’t think Pogtopia is much of a home,” he points out, just because he has to and they both know it. It’s closer to a joke than an accusation.

She huffs out a laugh, rolling her eyes. She’s missed this. She’s missed Wilbur.

“Then let’s make it one.”

* * *

One conversation, of course, does not solve everything.

They both know this as they make their way back to Pogtopia, hand in hand, in the early morning sun. The conversation does not silence the voices, merely quiets them; it does not rid Wilbur’s skin of the itch to press the button; it does not relieve Wilbur of Eret’s echoing words or of the temptation to take what he made and destroy it. The conversation does none of these things, and that’s okay. There are more conversations for that, more hands to hold, more days to work with in order to help. There’s more  _ time _ is what counts.

But for now, they return to Pogtopia. Niki combs through Wilbur’s hair, forces him to clean his face, forces him to change into different clothes, forces him to  _ finally _ lay in bed so she can wrap him in a blanket and tuck him into bed. Wilbur sleeps for the first time in who-knows-how-long. Niki sends the others off to make this ravine more liveable––Quackity to get different seeds, the boys to start an animal farm, Techno to help her expand the actual ravine. They listen in a way that faintly surprises her; they seem relieved.

They get to work. She carves out rooms–– _ proper _ rooms––and lets Techno work on the exterior. She stuffs extra wool into beds, sews up holes in blankets, puts up new torches were others have burned out. They’re quiet as they work, the hours passing easily, stone and gravel and dirt crumbling underhand as they start the long process of making a home.

“There was a man once,” Techno says out of the blue, as Niki holds up a door for Techno to attach to the wall. She blinks and stares at him, waiting for him to continue. “A man who was forced on a long, seemingly endless journey by the gods, all in an attempt to get home. He lost everything a man could lose on the way––his people, his ship, his time. He traveled for ten years as the gods made every attempt possible to break his spirit––but he did not waver. He kept going, resolute in his convictions to return home.”

“Did he ever make it home?” she asks. It’s the most she’s ever heard Techno speak outside of the Festival. There’s something calming and firm in the way he speaks.

“Yes.” Techno’s red eyes meet her brown. She has the distinct feeling that he’s talking to her when he says that. “He made it home.”

Niki hums, a small smile pulling on her lips.

“What was the man’s name?” she asks.

“Odysseus,” he replies, and she wonders whose name he actually means to put there. Wilbur, perhaps?

“How was it when he arrived home?” she asks because she wants to know how their story will end.

“Messy. Suitors had clamored to his island to wed his wife, Penelope, who waited for him to return home. She had made a promise to the suitors that once she had finished her tapestry, she would pick a man to marry. Except, every night, she would undo her work and restart it the next day. When Odysseus arrived back home, he competed for his wife’s hand in disguise and laid waste to the suitors with his son.” He lets out a snort, something reminiscent of a laugh. “My kind of family bonding.”

Niki can’t help the laugh that escapes her lips.

She thinks of Wilbur, about the siren call of the button, how he spent so much time and love on L’Manberg and wants to undo all of it. She thinks of how his home was invaded by those grasping for power, how he had been left alone with someone too young to truly help. She thinks of Wilbur and Technoblade’s story, and she understands now.

Wilbur is Penelope, on the brink of destroying his unfinished tapestry. Wilbur is Penelope, holding the weight of Pogtopia on his shoulders as he waits, desperately, for someone to understand.

Niki is Odysseus, being beaten and battered and spat on by the gods yet still standing strong. She is Odysseus, returning home,  _ making _ it home, with her own two bloodied hands if she must.

Niki will make it home. Wilbur will not be left alone. Tommy and Tubbo will get to be kids. Quackity will get to rest. 

This, Niki is sure of.

* * *

“ Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”

―  **Homer, The** **Odyssey**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Comments are greatly appreciated!!
> 
> And again, PLEASE do not reference, mention, or show this to the content creators!! It's fandom etiquette to keep fandom stuff WITHIN the fandom. The creators don't owe us anything and are their own independent people––if they want these fics taken down, then the fics will be taken down.


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